About

Australia ready for Brazil at FIFA Women's World Cup 2011

Westfield Matildas Head Coach Tom Sermanni has today named his starting line-up to play Brazil in Australia’s opening match of the FIFA Women’s World Cup at Mönchengladbach Stadium.

Westfield Matildas Head Coach Tom Sermanni has today named his starting line-up to play Brazil in Australia-s opening match of the FIFA Women-s World Cup at Mönchengladbach Stadium.

At the same venue where the Qantas Socceroos beat Germany only months ago, the Westfield Matildas will be attempting to trump their male counterparts on the world stage with a victory over the much fancied Brazil.

Sermanni has included seven FIFA Women-s World Cup debutants in the starting line-up including 16-year-old Caitlin Foord and 17-year-old Emily van Egmond.

The team also sees recent birthday girls Tameka Butt and Kyah Simon, both of whom turned 20 in the past week, join Australia-s impressive attacking line-up which has scored 10 goals in their past four matches.

Captain Melissa Barbieri, Collette McCallum, Lisa De Vanna and Heather Garriock will form the spine of the team while the team-s AFC Women-s Asian Cup winning defensive unit of Kim Carroll, Servet Uzunlar and Elise Kellond-Knight will add much needed steal to Australia-s play following their impressive and relentless efforts at last year-s Asian Cup.

“We mulled over the team selection for this match for some time and it really came down to a performance based selection,” said Tom Sermanni.

“The whole squad has been training brilliantly, we-ve got 21 players on the park every day and the work rate has been tremendous.

“While some players will be disappointed not to be starting in the first match the whole squad will definitely play a tremendously important part as this tournament goes on and I think the players understand that and are all committed to putting in a huge effort.

“A lot of credit has to go to the Westfield W-League which has been a massive help in creating this team.

“12 months ago some of these players, including Caitlin, would not have emerged so quickly and developed so well without this vital competition and it has been a huge boost for the regeneration of the squad.”

The Westfield Matildas begin their campaign tonight with their opening match against world number 3 Brazil (June 30, 2.15am AEST SBS ONE), before playing Equatorial Guinea on July 3 (10pm AEST SBS TWO) and Norway on July 6 (July 7, 2am AEST SBS ONE).